What to Pin on Pinterest to Attract your Dream Customer

The biggest mindset shift to make in business, that I think is the key to taking you from strugglin’ to truly successful, is that you have to get out of your own head and into your customer’s perspective.

This means really trying to see the world, and your business, from their eyes. And it goes for everything, from your website copy to your branding, and is of course incredibly helpful when it comes to social media.

So the first thing you want to think about when you’re like, “What the heck am I supposed to pin on Pinterest??” is to consider, what would your dream customer pin?

Keep your dream customer in mind, always

First things first, you want to drill down to exactly who you’re trying to attract to your business.Read this post to learn more about who your dream customer is and to download a free exercise that you can use to discover her personality, interests, and the topics she’d be interested in, beyond just what you sell.

Then, once you have your dream girl in mind, you can pin from her point of view… Think about, why is she using Pinterest? What types of things does she collect on there? What boards does she have? What types of things is she searching for on Pinterest? What is her lifestyle like? What’s her style, taste, design aesthetic? What are her hobbies and interests, the kinds of things she does on her downtime? What is she inspired by? Motivated by? What does she secretly covet? Want? Need? Yearn for?

These are all things that dream customer exercise can help you dig further into, and all things you want to keep in mind as you start pinning for your business. The more you can pin things that connect to your customer’s point of view, the better you’ll be able to engage her and draw her into your account to hopefully like/pin/follow you and eventually (the main goal, of course) make it over to your site!

Use the 80/20 rule

On Pinterest, everything you pin will basically fall into two different categories: pins leading back to your site (the stuff you sell, posts from your blog, etc), and pins that lead to other people’s sites.

There’s a general consensus that 80% of the things you share should be other people’s good stuff, and only 20% your own. I usually think of it as for every ten pins, I only really want two that are self-promotional, integrated amongst other content that is directly geared toward my dream customer, and what she’s using Pinterest for.

Now why would you want to go and pin other people’s stuff and take the focus away from your own site? Because it’s that other content that’s oriented toward your customer’s varied interests that will help to engage them, help them relate to what you’re pinning, connect with it, and want to see more of it (and that’s when they follow you!)

If you’re solely self-promotional, you’ll turn people off as being too markety markety salesy salesy. The key in attracting that ideal customer to your work lies in attracting them to your Pinterest profile, and every single pin that directly engages them is an opportunity for them to connect with your brand, get over to your profile, and over to your site.

So, all pins and re-pins that you share become entryways to your site, in the long run, when you consistently pin things that attract and engage that dream customer you’re after.

Create multiple boards you can pin your site’s content to

It is smart to create a board, or boards, specifically for your brand, where your dream customers can find everything to catch up with you, whether it’s your products or blog posts or whatever you’re pinning from your site.

That’s fine to do, but the mistake I most often see creative business owners make is that they keep pins from their site strictly to those “branded” boards, and then they don’t pin their products anywhere else! That’s where you may be missing out on a lot of other opportunities for your dream customer to see and connect with what you have to offer.

So, make sure you create some boards where both your offerings and other people’s content can happily co-mingle together, so that you can pin content from your own site in multiple places, and have more opportunities for those dream customers to find it!

For example, Aeolidia’s blog content also can be pinned to our “Marketing Tips for Creatives” board where we share other helpful articles from around the web, and we have a “Branding Tips & Inspiration” board where we can pin things from both the blog and portfolio, along with other people’s designs we admire. So, if someone isn’t following our “…by Aeolidia” branded boards, but are following some of these others ones, we still have a chance to get pins of our content right in front of them.

Now that you know the hows and the whys, here are some ideas and prompts to help you figure out exactly what to pin!

QUICK CONTENT GUIDE: WHAT TO PIN TO ATTRACT YOUR DREAM CUSTOMER

I broke it into 5 main categories that are some of the most popular content to share on Pinterest, along with prompts to help you consider how to apply these ideas to the specific dream customer you’re looking to attract.

Think about what stage of life your customer is in and how that would shape her interests and the types of things she’s searching for and pinning on Pinterest. Also, like I mentioned above, think about where you’d be able to naturally integrate the things you offer into some of these additional categories as well.

Our content guide gives you ideas on these topics:

Home & family life

Shopping related

Aspirational

Helpful How-Tos

Seasonal & Event Related

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Learn who your target customer is, and find out how to attract them online.

I hope this helps you get out of your head, and into your dream customer’s perspective so you can start pinning from their point of view, and attract more of exactly the kind of customers you want!

Do you have Qs? Need help with more specific ideas for your particular business? Let me know in the comments – I’d love to hear your thoughts and help out where I can!

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Great article! I am wondering about followers on Pinterest…is it a good idea to clean up who I am following as well as following people back? What is the best business practice for this? Thanks! http://www.pinterest.com/simplysilverngreen

Thank you for great info as I am still learning about Pinterest. You clarified that it was ok to share other pins. I watched a short video by someone who said that you change the links of each pin to your address as this confused me as it would block people from pin content. Is it best practice to leave a comment?

I have to say that I love your sense of style. As a brand, you rock. I think what’s most important is consistency, whether it’s maintaining your brand, or blog. Pinterest really helped boost my blog views and I love the 80-20 rule. ☺

Such a great article! I was posting pins that were relevant to my ideal client, but i didn’t know about the 80/20 rule. As soon as I read that I figured ours would be 80. Im so thankful that I came across this post ! Thank you!